Reflections on sunday: World, here comes the Third World!

When I saw our president handing over the Broadband Report to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, with another gentleman, I wanted to know who the gentleman was. I asked around and was told that the man was a Mexican tycoon…… Well, I thought, I’ve known rich people in my time. There was, for instance, the big boy of Bufumbira, southern Uganda, in the early 1960s, who is my relative, now tired of limb. Jemusi Bigirimana was definitely rich, and he liked to flaunt his riches, by tossing away coins. He started from humble beginnings, freshly exiled like all of us. Being a robust and hard-working boy, however, he tilled the land for the natives and was paid according to the day’s work. The pay was not the highest, but the money had value then. If one ‘gitobore’(half-a-cent coin) could buy twelve ‘hilled’ sweets, for instance, you can imagine what you could buy with fifty cents – which constituted a day’s earnings! A coin was called ‘igitobore’: it had a hole in its middle, which made it easy to keep as many people wore no clothes. That meant that nobody had any pocket and so people passed a string through the hole and tied the string around the body. A sweet was ‘hilled’ because sweets of the time had a succession of 12 ‘mounds’. They were not like the mean sweets of today and one sweet was enough for twelve youngsters, each taking one ‘mound’/‘hill’. Jemusi knew we cherished the delicacy of sweets but didn’t want to offer them to us on a silver platter. He wanted us to break a sweat working for them, just as he had sweated for the cents. So, when he tossed the gitobore in the bush, we scampered to look for it and whoever got it would be boss for the day. It was not until the 1970s that I realised Jemusi had not been that rich, after all. I was in Kampala then, during the reign of Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada as president of Uganda. The big gun of Kampala at the time was known as Mathew Opoka, who made money selling tyres. When Opoka flaunted his riches, every bar patron went home on all fours! He liked to hang out (today’s lingo!) in the triangle of the big hotels of Kampala at the time: International, Imperial and Speke Hotels. The bars in these hotels were usually crowded in the evenings with everybody nursing their one bottle, in anticipation of Opoka’s arrival. His opening words on arrival were always the same: “Fuanya vile tuko!” That was the corrupted Ugandan Kiswahili for “Fanya tulivyo!” but no one knew better or cared. What mattered was the import of those words, for they meant “Do the needful for everyone!” which meant to give everybody a drink. When his ‘porter’ (money was in bags when it was a lot, those days!) looked at the bill and announced the amount, Opoka always dismissed it with “They haven’t even finished one tyre!” Opoka was from West Nile. In Central Uganda, a Muganda who is a multi-millionaire may not even own a car, like a Mkikuyu in Kenya. Yet a rich man in Kenya is not seen in terms of tyres. Rather, a truly rich man there owns chains of hotels and swathes of land with factories and ranches. When I came back to Rwanda, where everybody shuns showing off, it was even worse. Yes, you could tell that late Miko (Bless His Soul) was well-heeled by an expensive taste he betrayed here and there. However, by looking at Rujugiro, can you tell that that shopping mall belongs to him? As for late Rubangura (Bless His Soul), you could have pitied him with an offer of alms!...... My interlocutor, who had told me about the Mexican tycoon, interrupted my thoughts with “Uhm….did you hear what I said?” I responded with “Ah, yes, yes. You said that was a Mexican tycoon. Sorry, I was reflecting on the rich men I’ve known in my life.” “Ingina,” said he, “what I mean is, do you know the richest man in the world?” I chuckled, wondering if he was not off his rocker. Everyone knows the Microsoft Software mogul who has been on top of the list of moneyed men and women for almost as long as I’ve been eating dust on this earth. Of course, I know that occasionally, when it has not been Bill Gates on top of the list, it has been Warren Buffet, the American investment bigwig. Or had the Indian manufacturing magnate, Mukesh Ambani, tipped the scales? When I expressed my thoughts, he simply asked: “Does the name Carlos Slim ring a bell?” Oh, yes, Carlos Slim Helú, the Telecommunications big enchilada of Mexico! So, a Third World big shot can now top the world? One man in countries with single-digit billion budgets having access to an income as colossal as $60 billion? I betcha, a dozen of them can create enough employment to drag every poor person in the Third World out of poverty! Well, West, Wealthy Third ‘Worlders’ are coming! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk